CHARLI3 - Off-Chain & CNT Price Feeds (Community feed expansion)

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Robert Hever

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

2

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Priority 1: Provide 30-50 FREE oracle network price feeds through our existing Charli3 ecosystem, all in 2-3 months.

Priority 2: Create DAO to determine what feeds the ecosystem wants to launch.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

For delivering the price feeds in the proposal, our team has no dependencies. The Charli3 launched the ADA/USD price feed in October 2022. In Q4 2024, we are 10x our price feeds and with this proposal funding we plan to get to as many as 50 active free feeds.

For implementing a DAO mechanism, we will be using the solution provided by Clarity DAO: https://clarity.community/ . Clarity has built the DAO platform to allow us to easily implement this feature much faster than we could ourselves, expediting the implementation of these subsidized feeds for community and builder use.

In general, the Charli3 team is supported by and dependent on

MLABS - development

METALAMP - development

And several other contractor teams....

These contractors may be involved in the building, upgrading, and maintaining our decentralized node software while also creating and implementing these new data feeds. However, our in-house development team are currently the only resources allocated for delivering the price feeds.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

For clarification, this proposal is to provide more free data through our existing solution: Charli3 is a decentralized oracle solution with active price feeds, a network of nodes, and an architecture native to Cardano that has been active since October 2022. We will simply be using our existing product, the C3 Ecosystem, to launch new C3 Networks (node networks parameterized to deliver specific data on-chain).

Example of our current solution active since Oct 2022 (1000s of successful data deliveries on-chain with 100% uptime): https://cexplorer.io/address/addr1wyd8cezjr0gcf8nfxuc9trd4hs7ec520jmkwkqzywx6l5jg0al0ya/tx#data

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The price feeds will be freely available to anyone.

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In order to consume any of the planned price feeds, our datum standard is open source and available here: https://docs.charli3.io/charli3s-documentation/summary

Charli3 Core Product is Closed Source: To protect the security of our node network our back-end code and infrastructure for the C3 Networks remains private.

What is open sourced?

• Our datum standard is open source and available on our website
• Our node software will be open source

DAO Context: For this particular expansion of our community feeds. Access to vote in our DAO is open and inclusive to any public member. Proposals to request data feeds is also open to any member of the public. Note less than 30% of the funds will go towards the DAO component.

The management of the price feeds will be done by the Charli3 lab. Some parameters of the feed will be restricted to protect the community from overusing funds or breaking the economics of a feed. For example, setting a deviation check to 0.01% may trigger 100s or 1000s of price updates per hour causing funds to drastically be used. Likewise, decreasing node rewards may decentivize our node networks from supplying the feed. As we launch more feeds, our goal is to slowly shift more of the control over to the community DAO.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

• This proposal is NOT funding to build an oracle solution

Restated:

For clarification, this proposal is to provide more free data through our existing solution: Charli3 is a decentralized oracle solution with active price feeds, a network of nodes, and an architecture native to Cardano that has been active since October 2022. We will simply be using our existing product, the C3 Ecosystem, to launch new C3 Networks (node networks parameterized to deliver specific data on-chain).

Example of our current solution active since Oct 2022 (1000s of successful data deliveries on-chain with 100% uptime): https://cexplorer.io/address/addr1wyd8cezjr0gcf8nfxuc9trd4hs7ec520jmkwkqzywx6l5jg0al0ya/tx#data

Our solution is twofold:

1. Launch and maintain price feeds for public consumption through our open source datum standard.
2. To have the public directly vote on what price feeds they want for launched as part of our community fund with the creation of a DAO through Clarity.

PRICE FEEDS (2):

This proposal is a continuation of two previous funding rounds. It is important to note that 90% of that funding is still available. Instead of releasing 20+ feeds in 2023 with unknown demand, our team made a business decision to delay launch of our feeds until we clearly understood the demand from the ecosystem on what feeds would help builders the most. Additionally, our ADA/USD flagship feed has been live on mainnet with 99.99999% uptime. Our team has been able to battletest our solution for quite some time. We are confident in our solution, alert and monitoring solutions, and overall management of node networks that adding 30+ price feeds in 2 months is entirely feasible. All we need is some additional funding and input from the public on what you might want.

The funds from this proposal will be added to our current coffers. Charli3 has added USD$90,000 to this fund already.

RE: "You already received funding, why do you need more? Where are the feeds?"

As state above, 90%+ funding is still available and we delayed launch to correspond with ecosystem demand. We intend to launch feeds every week starting in Dec 2023 and this proposal extends how long those feeds stay up and how many are available.

In fact, it takes our team several hours to launch a feed (although organizing a node network takes more time). We can easily launch new feeds. In fact, as of Dec 5th 2023 our team is in the process of launching 3 price feeds a week. Popular CNTs to ADA pairs (BTC/ETH/CHF/ETC...).

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With the proposed amount, we will likely be able to provide 30+ price feeds in Q1 of 2024 and provide them for at least 12 months. Without the funding, we will likely need to reduce the amount of feeds available.

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Review our fund wallet here:

https://cardanoscan.io/address/01b4bfcbd596453b963c35fb87438cdc72b5d04c8c1ed971e89601ba098271b10439f70680988365c49f9f1ae14c2cf34134b5efa3b18fe2ca

DAO with Forum (2)

The challenge with managing these funds is determining what price feeds the Cardano community needs most. We currently only receive a small subset of the community: well funded and successful protocols and whales who want secure feeds on their desired protocols requesting very specific data feeds. In December 2023, we will begin launching some of these requested feeds. Although we conducted a twitter survey and questioned 25+ protocols in the community, we feel we can do better to determine the consensus of the ecosystem.

Our solution is to create a Clarity DAO that is public / free-to-join. Next, we will need to create a forum for users to communicate and be made aware of changes to the community feeds. That includes votes to determine what 1) what price feeds launch 2) parameter changes to current feeds 3) removal of current price feeds 4) review of fund management. Charli3 has funds available, but we want the community to step in to direct how they are used. In order to manage a forum and the DAO we will need team members and integrations.

We will need a front-end developer to create a front-end forum with voting capabilities. Likewise, we will need to hire a dedicated moderator to support users. Setting up the DAO is a relatively simple process as we can work directly with the Clarity team. Integrating the DAO results to changes to our community feeds and more directly the oracle on-chain contract parameters will require an intermediary team member to execute the DAO's plans. Proposals to be voted on by the DAO must be created and presented by the Charli3 lab team as well.

In summary,

1. Public forum
2. DAO to vote on available price feeds
3. Management of both resources
4. Marketing to raise adoption by ecosystem

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

1. Increased Data reliability; protocols may not have the time to focus 100% on the uptime of their data integrations, may not have dedicated nodes under constant alert and monitoring to ensure data is delivered reliability, may not monitor APIs and data sources constantly, may not have a solution robust enough to handle chaotic fluctuations in data during black swan and bull market events, may not have enough data sources or resources to distribute the data feeds across many points of failure ... Charli3's flagship feed reacts to 1% deviations in price, 5 nodes pull from 14 independent data sources for a combined 70+ API calls in 2ms, if any data sources go down, a node goes down the data will remain intact... likewise, Charli3 does not simply take a median price but employ our complex algorithm for determining the best data to post on-chain after delivered on-chain by the node network.
2. Increased development and building on Cardano; no need to allocate resources to build a data integration solution. Open source data standard and free price feeds allow builders to focus on their own solution.
3. Protocols will get more Liquidity and Users; although DeFi, Lending, and other protocols will say they are doing just fine, the reality is that Whales are unlikely to trust protocols without assurances their funds won't be lost due to simple data issues. Data integration is a critical component and when something happens to impact the accuracy of the data, it is the end user who will pay the price. Think of it this way, an automated in-house multi-signature solution could work in normal congestion, normal price activity, but what happens when a data source goes down? APIs update without notice? What happens when there is a flash crash? Black swan events test the limits. Charli3 is designed with all these potential issues in mind.
4. Investors will take Cardano DeFi more seriously; investing in data integration is expensive, but signals to investors that the ecosystem is maturing. This proposal eliminates the cost so more protocols can leverage secure, accurate, and reliable price feeds.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Charli3 team's Track record:

We like to think our track record of building consistently since April 2021 speaks for itself. The ADA/USD price feed on mainnet has been live since October 2022 and up 99.99999% since then (View our flagship feed).

Our core solution passed a level 2 audit by CertiK.

It was one of the first solutions on Cardano audited by the CertiK team. Charli3 launched one of the first smart contracts after the capability was upgraded on mainnet. Our core architecture is native to Cardano and we are the first decentralized oracle solution built on Cardano.

At our peak our team consisted of 25+ team members. During the bear market, we've greatly reduced our team with intentions to scale up in 2024. The current development team consists of three core members and three contracting teams with 1-4 members each. Charli3 currently has around 15 dedicated members.

We have partners with industry leading development teams like Metalamp, Mlabs, and previously Plank.

DAO:

Charli3 is an established team with a good relationship with the Clarity team. We can easily set up a custom solution with Clarity to meet our needs. Additional funding from the proposal will go towards marketing the DAO. We will need to hire a moderator (approx. 500 monthly) to do some light work managing the user database, DAO access, and customer support.

In order to validate our approach, we need to keep an eye on number of active users in the DAO. Any number lower than 100 means we need to re-evaluate our approach and method for getting community input.

[Project Milestones] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Month 1-3:

 

• set up the DAO and initiate parameters around the voting structure.
• Launch data feeds chosen by the community
• Begin assisting projects in integrating these feeds.
• capture 100+ DAO members for operational voting

Key deliverables:

• LAUNCH 20 PRICE FEEDS
• Live DAO

3-6 months

 

• Capture 200+ DAO members for operational voting
• Sustain accurate and reliable feeds with minimal downtime to the community
• continue onboarding projects with the community feeds

Key deliverables:

• 200 membership in DAO

6-12 months:

 

• Expand our fund and add more feeds through community voting
• Continue growth of DAO and depth of active participants

USE at least 30% of the funding for new price feed launches** unless dao votes against using those funds

Key Deliverable:

• Convert 50% of funding into price feeds

12+ months:

 

Be in a position to extend the offering for another 12-24 months for all current running feeds. We will strive as a company to keep the community price feeds alive for as long as possible. Success is a long term community service that is constantly expanding in quality and quantity of feeds.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Charli3 team: https://charli3.io/team

• Team has since changed, but Damon Zwarich and Robert Hever are the Founders
• Project Technical lead: Deep Bhatt
• We have partners with industry leading development teams like Metalamp, Mlabs, and previously Plank.

Project Lead: Robert

DAO: Driven and delivered by Damon

Price Feeds: Deep will be handling the technical side

Support: Metalamp and Mlabs, as needed

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Breakdown of funding use:

Proposed amount: 295,000 ADA

1. 70,000 ADA --> DAO and Support
2. DAO Creation, Marketing, Management of networks, Development time for launching new feeds, and increased alert and monitoring
3. 225,000 ADA --> Price Feeds
4. placed in locked DAO wallet to pay for price feeds directly to the C3 Node network as rewards (added to previous funding)
5. Total funding with won proposal: USD$90,000(previous) + USD$95,000 (fund11) = USD$185,000
6. Charli3 contributes $90,000 of value to the feeds (we matched previous funding rounds)

Costs for Price Feeds

Funds to be received: USD$90,000 in ADA

Standard Crypto feed:

• 5+ node network
• 12 hour price update
• 2% deviation triggers price update
• Standard economic incentives for node network
• Crypto price data, non exotic
• Estimated monthly cost USD$250-800 per month
• Cost to launch 1 feed: 8 hours / USD$520 one time

Note: this is for a standard crypto data feed and does not reflect custom feed pricing, especially with exotic data

Cost variability due to the following factors:

• Ability to adjust trigger rate to 0.01% price change posts a new data on-chain (meaning costs sky rocket); we may have a few feeds matching our ADA/USD rate of 1%
• Ability to adjust heartbeat; with a deviation setting low it isn't necessary to have continual updates unless the DAO specifically desires it. Individual customers of Charli3 often have very specific requirements (60 minutes, 24 hours, 30 minutes, etc.); the goal is to provide a data feed that is best for the community at large
• Note that our team is constantly reducing costs and optimizing our architecture; so costs should continually go down
• Cardano infrastructure upgrades can change cost (dependency)

DAO

Funds to be received: USD$30,000 in ADA

Approx cost: USD$33,000

1. Clarity DAO creation:
2. USD$1,000 for launching
3. Moderation:
4. Moderator: USD$500 monthly
5. USD$6,000 yearly
6. Forum and database creation:
7. USD$11,000
8. Integrating DAO to Oracle Contract parameter changes:
9. Manual process: USD$500 monthly for team member
10. USD$6,000 yearly
11. Educational content and Marketing:
12. Marketing: USD$750 monthly
13. USD$9,000 yearly

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ESTIMATED Deliverables:

30+ price feeds launching all in 9 weeks. Maintained for at least 12 months. DAO created and maintained in first 2 months.

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[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Overall this project aims to serve the Cardano community on multiple levels. This saves projects in the Cardano ecosystem hundreds of thousands of dollars in oracle operations fees, lowers the ecosystem risk to centralized data operations, and allows more projects to come online faster with more security.

The DAO mechanism to community vote to manage the creation and existence of these feeds also plays into an overarching community intelligence of the most beneficial data for the ecosystem projects building, aiding to the decentralized goals of Cardano.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund Rules and also that data in the submission form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept